For Matt Schaub and the Texans offense, the coldest three hours in franchise history proved to be a day at the beach. Forget the 3 degrees at kickoff. It’s the 549 total yards, Schaub’s personal-best 414 through the air, rookie Steve Slaton’s hard-earned 120 on the ground and Kris Brown’s icicle in the Packers’ heart at the end, producing a 24-21 victory, that the participants are going to remember.

“I’m really happy for the team and especially for Matt,” Andre Johnson said. “He just came up to me afterward and gave me a big hug. I don’t know if it was a sigh of relief or what, but you could tell from his facial expression that he was really excited about it.

“We went down the field at a crucial time and made some big plays, then Kris won it for us. You know, I don’t think anybody gave us a chance to come up here and win in the cold.”

It doesn’t bother the Texans, apparently. Their current three-game winning streak began on a 30-degree afternoon in Cleveland.

“You get your mind right and know what to expect, and it’s not a problem,” said Schaub, who was playing for the first time since he suffered a partially torn knee ligament against Minnesota Nov. 2. “This was a great day for football.”

Still Schaub sounded almost in awe of what had transpired, admitting he couldn’t really verbalize the depth of his pride and satisfaction. Mind you, not about his own prodigious numbers despite a four-game layoff but about the Texans’ finding a way to ignore the bracing weather and their own ongoing propensity to self-destruct.

“We had a great opportunity to win it early on,” Schaub conceded, “but we gave them opportunities to get back into the game, which they did. We had to make another play at the end after getting backed up on that last drive. It’s just … it’s exciting for our team, overcoming the kind of adversity we did today.”

Turnovers prove costly

Three fumbles and an interception led to 21 Packers points and made this one a lot harder than it should have been.

“The turnovers are the only thing keeping us from being a great team,” Johnson said. “It’s very rare for a team to have over 500 yards and still have four turnovers. That just shows you what we can do. We’ve got a lot of guys who can make plays. We have a lot of weapons. Hopefully we can keep it going for the rest of the season.”

With the score tied at 21, the Texans took possession at their own 3 with 1:49 left, circumstances that hardly favor a team with a propensity toward giving the football away. And, in fact, Schaub did bobble a snap in the shotgun at the Houston 28, although he scrambled to recover it.

Otherwise, he was flawless, finding fullback Vonta Leach for a gain of 22, receiver David Anderson for 17 and 4, and, finally, tight end Owen Daniels for 27 to get comfortably within Brown’s field-goal range.

Schaub called Leach’s catch, on second-and-seven from the 6, “the play of the game,” explaining: “We had a play-action pass with (Johnson) deep, but they covered him. Vonta happened to slip out into the flat. I tried to put the ball in his hands, but the pass sort of took off on me. He was able to get one hand on it and the ‘Freight Train,’ the ‘Coke Machine,’ as we call him, turned down the sideline and ran a few guys over.”

Slaton breaks 1,000 yards

Slaton lost his first fumble of the season but more than redeemed himself with his third 100-plus game in four starts, a stretch over which he’s averaging nearly 6 yards per carry.

“We wanted to run the ball and we thought we could gash them,” he said. “I was trying to move the pile on every play, and I got great blocking from the linemen. They cleared some big holes. With Vonta in front of me, I know I don’t have to worry about the first guy (tackling me).”

As for the second guy …

“My strength,” Slaton said, “is making people miss.”

It has made Slaton a thousand-yard back — 1,024 — and given the Texans’ passing attack room to operate.

“Green Bay’s not a bad defense,” Daniels said. “To do what we did today … that’s pretty incredible.”